Smoke
by Angel of Harmony
Summary: Something about the way the smoke spiraled into the air from the space between his lips made you want to breathe it in like pure oxygen, the adverse effects of secondhand smoke be damned. Angsty Skitterace. Rated for cursing. Race week fic.


**Title**: Smoke  
**Feedback**: Any and all constructive criticism would be lovely, whether e-mailed or left in a review.  
**Disclaimer**: Disney owns nearly everything I've ever obsessed over. This is no exception.  
**Warnings**: Abundant cursing. That's about it.  
**Pairing**: Race/Skittery (Skitterace)  
**Author's Note:** This is my first real attempt at a non-Javid pairing, so I'm not sure how well it turned out. But, nonetheless, it is my contribution to Race week. A very, very happy birthday is wished to the wonderful and awesome TheSecondBatgirl.

**Smoke**

By Angel of Harmony/Harmony/Jen

_I don't see the point in signing yearbooks, Skitts. Sorry. It's just a bunch of sentimental bullshit, and it's not like I'll miss anyone anyway. - **Race**_

As you lean against your car in the parking lot of the restaurant, holding your yearbook in open palms, and stare at the words he's finally written, you want, for the first time, to leave for college. Immediately.

But he, with his default nonchalance, is planting an elbow on your trunk as he flicks the silver lighter in his hand, digging in his pocket for a cigar.

You remember when he first started with the cigars, six months before, and the minor stir it caused in your mostly straightedge group of friends. How he found himself barraged with lectures and clucking disapproval from the more vocal protesters, not to mention quite a few discreet-but-pointed coughs from the rest. David especially tried his hardest to get him to stop, citing the health risks like an encyclopedia, but it didn't work any better than it had on Jack, who he'd been trying to persuade to quit smoking for the entire length of their three-year relationship.

As for you, you knew the cigars _should_ have bothered you. You'd watched two grandparents fall to lung cancer and had vowed long ago never to let nicotine enter your own system. But there was something utterly intoxicating about his smoking that, try as you might, you couldn't avoid or deny. It wasn't that it seemed "glamorous" or "cool" or anything else the anti-smoking crusaders accused tobacco advertisers of trying to convey; if anything, it only enhanced the image of the stereotype he already was: the sarcastic, poker-playing Italian with enough brashness to compensate for his stature. But something about the way the smoke spiraled into the air from the space between his lips, dissipating in white-grey clouds of sickly-sweet aroma, made you want to breathe it in like pure oxygen, the adverse effects of second-hand smoke be damned.

And you wanted to breathe him in, too. You still do.

Because now he's doing it once again, igniting the end of the dark cylinder and pressing it to his lips as the first tiny wisps of smoke begin to rise, and your eyes are drawn to him despite your seething anger. You close your yearbook almost delicately, placing it on the trunk as you continue to study his complacent features.

You remember how the longing had nearly destroyed you by the time you took that trip to the bowling alley, that terrible wonderful trip. How he stood on the lurid purple carpet of the ledge above the lanes, leaning placidly against a plastic table and smoking a strawberry cigar that he later said tasted like shit but that drew you in all the same. He insulted everyone as he placed verbal bets on the scores, (not deigning, of course, to join the game himself), but to you he was especially cruel. Every missed pin was called out and mocked, every comment on music or movies or life struck down by his merciless wit, and the others laughed with some discomfort, not daring to challenge his power over the group. Just like always.

Maybe an insult had been just too sharp, or hit too close to home. Maybe it was his relentlessness and the way he seemed to target you and only you, as if he knew your secret and needed to punish you for it. Maybe it was the smoke and the way it reminded you that his cruelty only made you want him more. But something inside you broke, snapped in half like something plastic and brittle, and before you knew what you were doing you'd stalked off to the bathroom, yelling to Mush over your shoulder to bowl for you on your next turn.

You paced the length of the bathroom for a full minute before finally sighing and pressing your forehead against the cool smudged glass of a mirror. Your circling thoughts served to drown out your physical senses, which may have been why you didn't react when the door to the bathroom opened again and a figure came up next to you, smoking a cigar and leaning lazily against the adjacent sink rim.

"What the hell is your problem?" You looked up at the sound of Race's voice and shot him a bitter look.

"What? I'm supposed to just stand there and be your verbal punching bag for hours?" You didn't look at him as you spoke, because you knew if you did you'd lose all the resolve for your argument.

Race rolled his eyes. "You're my friend, asshat. If you can't tell I'm joking, you're even more of an idiot than I thought." Then he smirked. "Besides, it's not my fault you want me."

That statement finally made you look up at him, your eyes wide. "What?" you cried, laughing too loudly, trying your best to make it sound as if the statement was ludicrous when you knew it was exactly the opposite.

Race snorted, then took the cigar from his lips and leaned toward you, letting the ashes fall onto the chipped porcelain of the sink. Before you knew what was happening his hand had snaked itself into your hair and his lips were on yours, strawberry smoke slipping into your mouth along with his tongue. Your eyes remained wide for the duration and didn't narrow even when Race pulled away, still smirking.

"Now get your ass back to the lane. Mush is fucking up your score." And with that he was gone, the cigar and the attitude back in their proper places.

You didn't know what to think of him then any more than you know what to think of him right now. You'd been willing to believe that the bowling incident was a fluke, a random bit of whimsy, if not outright cruelty, on Race's part. But that bathroom was soon followed by more bathrooms, not to mention a few less-than-innocent encounters on his futon and secret rendezvous in deserted supply closets, and pretty soon you were sure it wasn't just a fluke. You're not sure when "not a fluke" turned into "relationship", but it didn't really matter, seeing as whatever the "relationship" was—is, though that "is" is becoming less certain by the moment—was never allowed to be revealed.

It's funny, you think now, but the closet act never bothered you all that much. You always figured Race had his reasons for keeping things quiet, even if you didn't understand them. His Catholic mother and conservative Republican father were certainly reason enough to keep things under wraps where home was concerned, anyway. With your friends it had always made less sense—considering Jack and David had been attached at the hip for three years and counting and Mush was out and proud to boot, it's not like anyone would have criticized you. But Race seemed to get some sort of perverse pleasure from being the "token straight guy", fooling them all, and you have to admit that the illicit feeling of the secrecy was a thrill for you as well. So even when Jack and David bemoaned the fact that they never had anyone to double date with and Mush tried to set you up with a friend of his cousin's, you didn't feel it was necessary to rip through the shroud of secrecy.

No, it was something else that bothered you. Something else that embodies the way that Race is acting right now, the way you know he'll react when you try to convey what you're thinking.

You distinctly remember a particular time at the mall. You were upset about something or other, though you don't remember now what it was. Jack and David had been trying ineffectually to cheer you up, and Mush had been shooting you pitying looks the entire time that clearly said "If you need to talk, you know I'm here." They were being the great friends they'd always been.

But Race was a different story. "Hey, jerk," he said, as you stared blankly into your soda, "Snap the hell out of it."

You looked up across the food court table and gave him a warning look. "Just leave me alone, ok?" You were willing to believe in the good intentions of his words, but you knew they wouldn't help.

But Race wouldn't take that for an answer. Reaching across the table, he slapped you across the cheek, just hard enough to leave a stinging mark. "What the fuck is your problem? You're bringing everyone down. Stop being an emo fucktard."

You stared at him, livid, but unable, even then, to say anything in your defense. Jack and David looked at each other uneasily, and it was Mush who finally defused the situation. "Come on, guys," he said. "Let's get out of here; the mall's closing in twenty minutes anyway." And so you left, piling into Jack's car for the long ride back to town, Race making sniping comments about your mood the entire time.

You could have ignored the incident, or at least chalked it up to badly-executed concern, if it wasn't a reflection of almost every group hangout that had occurred over the course of the five months you were together. You'd expected, naively perhaps, that starting a relationship with Race would end the constant mockery he'd subjected you to since the beginning of your friendship back in freshman year. But when you were around Jack and the others, the sniping didn't subside; if anything, it only increased in frequency and intensity, as if Race had something to prove.

But you always assumed, you realize now, that those actions were all a front. You knew Race could be loving, and even tender—could drop the outer shell of snarky criticism and mockery—when the two of you were alone. The sex the evening after the mall trip, after all, had certainly more than made up for his earlier callousness. In those moments his voice was gentle and his tobacco-tinged breath soft on your skin, and his words, if not sentimental, were charming and kind. So you figured his jerk-performance in public was just another facet of the closeted nature of your relationship, and you accepted it. But this yearbook isn't public, and suddenly your former subconscious justification no longer squares with the situation.

You've been staring at Race for a good three minutes now, watching him take long drags on his cigar, and you figure it's about time to express your thoughts.

"You're an asshole." It's the first thing you can think of to say, though perhaps not the most tactful.

Race merely grins around the cigar. "I know."

Your urge to hurt him is overcome only by the hurt in your own chest. "You knew how much this meant to me."

And he did. He had to. Two months of constant prodding had led to this moment, and now, on your last day together before college, in the parking lot of the diner where you'd just had a farewell breakfast with your entire circle of friends, he had finally relented to your entreaties. Had it been too much to expect a brief, heartfelt message from your boyfriend of nearly half a year, from your friend of four years before that?

Apparently.

"Oh, come on, Skitts. Are you really that much of a pussy that you're going to get worked up about a fucking yearbook? Give me a fucking break." Race rolls his eyes pointedly and refocuses on his cigar.

You want to protest, but your feel tired, suddenly. You know that your arguments will be struck down. You know that he'll only make you feel like an idiot, like a whiny little girl. Why should you bother? Even as the smoke and the smirk threaten to draw you toward forgiving and forgetting, you have to wonder if it's worth it anymore.

One time, you remember, a few weeks after the mall, you were at a McDonald's with Jack, David, and Mush. Race was out with his family, so, following the laws of gossip, he naturally became the topic of conversation. Much of the ranting on the parts of Jack and the others was warranted, and you didn't do much to defend him; in fact, you felt yourself slipping into your own litany of his character flaws, concealing, of course, just how close the two of you were. About halfway through your rant, Jack interrupted you.

"I don't get it, Skittery. What do you and Race _do_ when you hang out together? For that matter, why do you hang out at all? You obviously hate each other."

And, try as you might, you couldn't come up with an answer, or anything remotely resembling a defense. You wanted to say that he was wonderful in his own way, but you knew Jack would never believe it. Why should he believe something he'd never seen? And now, as you mentally reread his yearbook message that has, at this point, seared its burning letters into your mind, you're not even sure if Racetrack's "wonder" was ever real.

So now you're here, two days from college, leaning against your car with your yearbook in hand, still fishing for an answer to that question, and realizing, for the first time, that perhaps there isn't one. Or at least not one that's positive.

Race, of course, remains oblivious. He thinks the argument is over, thinks he's won, as usual. The parking lot is nearly empty, and he smirks as he looks around, puffing on his cigar.

He leans in then, as if to kiss you, sliding one hand around the curve of your skull. With the other he separates the cigar from his lips and holds it loosely at his side, blowing the coiling smoke into your open mouth from a two-inch distance. You choke, intoxicated and repulsed, then pull away, finally resolute.

"You know what?" you say, as you move swiftly past him to the driver's side door, placing your fingertips on the handle as you clutch the yearbook under your left arm. "I guess I won't miss you either."


End file.
